Effects of the phenomenon of diffuse territorial anthropization in the context of climate change on the Mediterranean coast during the last decade: from the environmental disaster of the Mar Menor of 2015 to the floods of 2024 in Valencia

The negative effects associated with territorial transformation have become one of the key variables of planetary imbalance in the current context of climate change. Environmental disasters, floods, droughts, etc., are often the unexpected result of poor territorial management, causing environmental damage or even resulting in the loss of human life.
This complex and sometimes difficult-to-detect phenomenon, known as diffuse territorial anthropization, has behavioral patterns whose cause–effect relationships are not always easy to assess. However, this problem exists in a diverse catalog of highly evident situations in developed European countries, especially on the Mediterranean coast.
This paper reviews case studies that have occurred in this area over the last decade. By observing spatiotemporal GIS patterns and using geostatistical analysis, it is evident how unbalanced growth and transformation processes in land use have contributed to increasing territorial vulnerabilities, causing serious environmental problems or catastrophic flooding episodes.
This study will explore the serious environmental problems that emerged in 2015 in the Mar Menor coastal lagoon, located in southeastern Spain, as a result of changes in land use in its watershed, which shifted from traditional dryland agriculture to intensive irrigated agriculture. It will also explore the recent flooding in southern Valencia, which caused more than 200 deaths by 2024. This problem is largely influenced by the transformation of the area's territory in recent decades.